Clinton

Accepts

Demand

U.s. Agrees To Limits

On Defensive Missiles

July 2, 1994|The Washington Post

WASHINGTON — The Clinton administration has agreed to a Russian demand for more limits on the speed and range of a new generation of defensive missiles being developed by the Defense Department, a senior administration official and other sources said on Friday.

While agreeing to limits in principle, however, the administration has not accepted the specific ones proposed by Russia, which would effectively veto the development of airand sea-based defensive missiles in the Pentagon pipeline, officials said.

While the negotiations over "flyout speeds" and re-entry speeds of missiles that do not yet exist sound arcane, the negotiations hold immense implications for U.S. defensive strategy in the post-Cold War Era.

The negotiations are also being held at a time when Russia is taking a hard line in parallel talks on several nuclear and non-proliferation issues, administration officials said. Congressional conservatives and even some administration officials think Washington is conceding too much in these talks.

For decades the principal military threat to U.S. security was posed by intercontinental "strategic" missiles in the Soviet arsenal. But now the Pentagon wants to develop mobile missiles that would intercept shorter-range "theater" missiles deployed overseas by enemies such as Iraq and North Korea.

In the 1972 Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty, the United States and the Soviet Union agreed not to develop mobile systems to shoot down each other's strategic missiles. The aim was to halt the cycle of escalation in which each side kept trying to develop new ways to trump the other's defenses.

But the treaty did not define the line between "strategic" missile defenses, which are prohibited, and "theater" defenses, such as the Patriots used in the Persian Gulf War, which are permitted.

To develop missile interceptors more advanced than the Patriots, the administration needs the consent of Russia and of Congress, which has insisted on a narrow interpretation of the ABM treaty. Those advanced interceptors would include the Theater High Altitude Area Defense Program, or THAAD, and longer-range airborne and sea-based systems.

In two rounds of negotiations in the Washington-Moscow "Standing Consultative Committee," the U.S. side has proposed that interceptors be allowed to knock out incoming missiles with ranges up to about 3,500 kilometers, or 2,200 miles.

Officials partly confirmed and partly denied a story in Friday's Washington Times saying U.S. negotiators have also agreed to accept limits on the flyout speed of the defensive systems that would permit the development of THAAD but not the Air Force and Navy systems.

"We have not accepted the Russian proposal for demarcating theater missile defenses that are allowed and those that are restricted," a senior administration official said.

"What we are doing is formulating a counteroffer" that accepts the principle of restrictions on flyout speed but does not accept the limits sought by Russia, the official said.